Esox niger vs Esox americanus:
Here is a quick, fairly reliable way to ID Esox spp. E. niger - suborbital bar (dark line below eye) is nearly vertical; E. americanus - suborbital bar is angled backward. From: Ross, S.T. 2001. The Inland Fishes of Mississippi. University Press of Mississippi, Jackson. 624 p.
I am fairly sure yours is E. niger according to this characteristic.
Take care,
Gretchen
I'm glad to see everyone else is working hard to identify the Esox... I mean they were at least 2 inches long... but seriously... I thought niger based on coloring when they were in my hand... the redfin I have seen at that lenght had a very distinctive line along the top of the fish... similar to the one on the side of the fish... when it looked at you you could see the beginnings of all three stripes... these guys did not have a strong line like that along the top...
As for the others... yes, pirate perch... and I am pleased to see that some of the purple showed up in the photograph... wish we would have had a photo tank... we were taking pictures in my hand while standing in the stream... benefit of the water proof camera... but the fish would have looked perfect if I could have brought Uland along with me... only 800 miles or so too far for him to travel... but in the tannin stained waters the PPerch was a nice royal purple...
As mentione dbefore, I do not normally keep sunfish so do not know them well... looking back on it, I think that almost everything we saw was black spotted... but pretty sure that I saw the "railroad tracks" of at least one juv. bluegill... but might not have the picture to prove it.